For at least the last forty years, experts in the scientific and economic communities have been predicting diminishing availability of petrochemical resources to produce the energy and chemical-based materials needed throughout the world. Fortunately, for much of this period, newly discovered petroleum reserves, and advances in petroleum production and conversion technologies have enabled the supply of these resources and the products producible therefrom to substantially keep pace with the ever-increasing demands. More recently, however, the rapid rate of industrialization of the world's most populous countries, China and India, coupled with increased political instability in petroleum-producing regions (most notably the Middle East, Nigeria, and Venezuela), have pushed oil prices to record levels, adversely affecting the US economy, among others. Moreover, environmental, ecological, and political considerations in the US continue to impact the production of this valuable resource by, among other matters, removing proven reserves from commercial exploitation.
The combined effects of ever-increasing demand and slowing rates of increase in the production of petroleum affect not only gasoline, diesel fuel and heating oil prices but also the prices of the vast array of chemicals that are feedstock's for an equally vast array of products, from drugs to plastics to pesticides, to name a few.
Over the past decade, this adverse economic impact has become a driving factor for developing alternative and sustainable ways to meet chemical-based materials needs. The Roadmap for Biomass Technologies in the United States (U.S. Department of Energy, Accession No. ADA436527, December 2002), authored by 26 leading experts, predicts that, by 2030, 25% of all chemicals consumed in the United States will be produced from biomass. More recently, the U.S. Department of Energy has identified 12 top-tier chemical building blocks from biomass processing, as reported in the Biomass Report for the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy entitled Top Value Added Chemicals from Biomass, Volume 1-Results of Screening for Potential Candidates from Sugars and Synthesis Gas, August 2004.
It has been reported that of the approximately 200 billion tons of biomass produced per year, 95% of it is in the form of carbohydrates, and only 3 to 4% of the total carbohydrates are currently being used for food and other purposes. Thus, there is an abundant untapped supply of biomass carbohydrates, which can potentially be used for the production of non-petroleum based specialty and industrial chemicals that are fully renewable. That said, biorenewable routes to sustainable supplies of valuable chemicals such as, for example, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, carboxylic acids, and esters useful for producing a vast array of products are less likely to become a reality until the cost of converting biomass to these chemicals is more nearly comparable to or, more preferably, advantaged as compared to the corresponding production cost from petroleum-based feedstocks.
Adipic acid is among the end products producible from biorenewable feedstocks. Such processes have been disclosed in, for example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,400,468 and 5,487,987 and, for example, in “Benzene-Free Synthesis of Adipic Acid”, Frost et al. Biotechnol. Prog. 2002, Vol. 18, pp. 201-211. However, to date, no process for producing adipic acid from biorenewable feedstocks has been commercialized.
Among the list of 12 building block chemicals targeted by the US government for production from biomass is 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid, and the government has solicited proposals for the use thereof in the production of industrial chemicals. To date, large scale production of high value industrial chemicals from 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid has not been achieved.
To that end, applicants have discovered processes which enable the production of high value, large market industrial chemicals cost effectively from a key building block material such as 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid.